I'm Changing, And Don't You Want To Know?

I know you are all just chomping at the bit waiting to hear about my sciatic nerve being pinched by my humongous uterus, or the fact that though I usually use my car horn about twice a year, I found reason to honk at at least a half dozen irritating drivers on the road the other day. But I won't put you through it, I promise.

But pregnancy is changing me, just like always, and I feel the need to write it down, get it out, and make you read it. Yeah, I'm mean like that.

It's more than just irritation with ridiculously slow drivers bent on ticking me off. It's more than finding myself raising my voice when I'm not quite sure why. And it's more than bawling uncontrollably at a story my girls and I listened to on the internet during school. It's a general turning inward that I start to do later in pregnancy.

Maybe it's that my body is focused on growing this baby and I don't have the emotional energy to spend on anything else. Maybe pregnancy puts life into perspective for me. Maybe it still takes more energy for me than I realize, not to spend weeks in fear that the worst could happen and that my heart will be broken again. I don't really know. What I do know is that I tend to isolate myself during the latter part of pregnancy.

Where once I enjoyed a good debate, and relished in the mental exercise, now it seems like a colossal waste of time. Where once I could spend hours being out with people, I feel like I'm closing my circle down, and I don't want to go out as much. Where once I wanted to be a part of things, I now mostly want to surround myself with family and be alone.

To some degree I find this normal. I think it's a part of preparing for birth, at least for me. But, I know myself well enough to be cautious. I am a woman who has spent a good part of her life struggling against depression. Real, clinical, brain chemistry depression. With this pregnancy, I got on an antidepressant fairly early, which seem to be working at a very low dose (something that makes me very happy and very grateful) and I don't see any warning signs that it's becoming anything more than just my routine nesting cycle.

Strangely enough, this is when I really start to feel pregnant. With kicks, and a sore pelvis, and months still to go. Thank goodness they're cute when they're born. It does make it all worth it.

From birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother's womb.
I will ever praise you.
Psalm 71:6